Texas porn age verification law upheld by Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Texas law that requires age verification for pornographic websites in one of the most closely watched First Amendment cases to arrive at the high court in years.

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Texas law that requires age verification for pornographic websites in one of the most closely watched First Amendment cases to arrive at the high court in years. The adult entertainment industry had challenged the Texas law as violating the Constitution because it restricted the ability of adults to access protected online speech. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion for a 6-3 court divided along ideological grounds with the court’s three liberals dissenting. “The statute advances the state’s important interest in shielding children from sexually explicit content,” Thomas wrote. “And, it is appropriately tailored because it permits users to verify their ages through the established methods of providing government-issued identification and sharing transactional data.” Texas’ law requires any website that publishes a substantial amount of content that is “harmful to minors” to verify the age of users. The challengers said the law forces adults to identify themselves – such as by providing an ID – before accessing pornography, which the group’s lawyers said violates access to free speech online because it would “chill” adults’ access to that content. Texas’ law is similar to more than a dozen others across the country that require users to submit some form of proof of adulthood. The Supreme Court, over the past many decades, has embraced a robust view of the First Amendment. Last year, it suggested that social media companies are entitled to First Amendment protection for their content moderation decisions, for instance. In 2023, the court set a higher standard for prosecuting “true threats” in the case of a man who was convicted of stalking a songwriter. A majority sided with a high school cheerleader in 2021 who argued she could not be punished by her public school for posting a profanity-laced caption on Snapchat when she was off school grounds.